A team led by Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, left Europe’s largest nuclear power plant at around 18:00 to return to territory controlled by Ukraine, leaving five inspectors at the site, according to Energoatom , the Ukrainian operator of convenience. “I just completed a first tour of the key areas that we wanted to look at in this first approach to the entire facility,” Grossi said. “Of course, there is still much to do. My team remains and, most importantly and most importantly, we are establishing an ongoing presence from the IAEA here.” The IAEA team’s inspection followed several hours of tension during which the inspectors were held in a frontline area as gunfire echoed from nearby fighting. The IAEA mission to the nuclear facility is expected to last several days, and the agency has said it wants to establish a permanent team on the ground. Russian forces seized the site, Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, marking the first time nuclear reactors have been at the center of a major war. Both Ukraine and Russia have repeatedly accused each other’s forces of conducting military strikes around the plant, sparking fears of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Ukraine, which has four nuclear power plants in operation, is home to the decommissioned Chernobyl plant, where the world’s worst nuclear accident occurred while it was under Soviet control in 1986. Earlier, a spokesman for Grossi told the Financial Times that the IAEA mission was “delayed on the Ukrainian-controlled side of the frontline for about three hours”. Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said: “Russia bombed Energodar and the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant” as the mission tried to approach. “They want to stop the visit of the IAEA mission. These are the actions of a terrorist state that is afraid of the world knowing the truth,” Yermak added. Energoatom said on Thursday that the Russian bombing prompted it to shut down one of only two reactors operating at the plant for the second time in 10 days. The plant has six reactors. IAEA inspectors set off from the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia on Thursday morning on their way to Energodar. The mission arrived in Ukraine earlier this week after months of negotiations in which the agency tried to secure permission and security guarantees from both warring parties.

Ukraine and its Western backers have repeatedly called on Moscow to demilitarize the plant and return control to Kyiv. They accused Russia of basing troops and equipment at the plant and using it as a shield when conducting artillery strikes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow expected the IAEA visit to assess the situation at the power plant “objectively” despite what he described as “attempts to make it more difficult”. He claimed that Ukrainian military activity around the plant could lead to “disaster”. The Moscow-based Interfax news agency, citing the Russian Defense Ministry, reported Thursday that a Ukrainian “sabotage group” traveling by boat across the Dnipro River was destroyed by a helicopter attack after landing near the facility. Russia’s Tass news agency, citing Alexander Volga, who was installed by Russian occupation forces as head of Energodar, said the city was without power on Thursday. The claims by the Russian and Ukrainian military could not be independently verified.